Part of my educational requirements to become a pastor was to complete Clinical Pastoral Education. It’s a fancy term for “hospital chaplaincy”. I was nervous about those 5 months in the hospital setting, knowing that I would be thrust headlong into a constant barrage of intense situations.
While our group’s educational supervisor was instructing us on the do’s and don’t’s of care in the hospital, our chaplaincy supervisors were hard at work setting up our schedules and assigning our placement rotations. My placements? Post-op Oncology and the Mental Health Ward, with once a month ER graveyard shift.
It was a lot—walking with those suffering from cancer, advocating for patients not always aware of their condition, and turn-on-a-dime emergency care in the middle of the night. Interestingly, the educational piece that got me through those months was not the instruction; it was the example.
Pastor Jeff and Pastor James were the full-time chaplain and assistant chaplain. Jeff was masterful in his bedside manner and in his ability to be calm in situations that were not. James was an example of steadfastness and hope. Between the two of them, I witnessed what care really looked like; just merely watching them shepherd the hospital sheep was a schooling of its own.
This past Monday (October 28) I stopped by the ER to see a friend and mentor who had taken a bad fall. I worked may way through the BUSY emergency observation halls to find my friend. Once I found him we talked and visited, enjoying each others’ company as if we were in his living room. Before I could encourage him in his time of need he began to encourage me, as if I was the one who needed it. The thing was, I kind of did need it. I had a lot on my mind and was sorting through it all.
I left my friend after a sweet time of prayer and immediately started thinking about how God orchestrated that moment for both of us, using me to encourage my friend and using my friend to encourage me. When I worked at the hospital, Pastor James would call those moments “divine appointments,” when God would put us in the right place at the right time in order to glorify Him. Those divine appointments happened over and over again over those 5 months back in 2009.
When I looked up from contemplating that moment, there in front of me after 15 years was Pastor James! He had since retired a few years back but took volunteer nights, driving from Homer to help out. Monday nights were NOT his normal night.
Divine appointment! We talked, caught up, encouraged one another, and stopped to pray in the middle of the busy ER hallway for the many (MANY) people being seen and for those who would care for them. Man. What a shepherd James is.
“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” —Proverbs 16:9 NIV
God led me to a bedside to encourage, only to be encouraged…twice. It is the Lord who establishes our steps, who makes our walking sure and firm and able to please Him. We can intend on many things, but the intent of the Lord will prevail if we will go in His name. He’ll order our steps, work things for our good if we’ll love Him and do what we for His purposes (Romans 8.28). May we let go of our own intentions and be led by the Holy Spirit today and always. May we see God in our coming and in our going and bless His holy name!